Britain and the Holocaust

Remembering and Representing War and Genocide

Caroline Sharples, Olaf Jensen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137350770
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

How has Britain understood the Holocaust? This interdisciplinary volume explores popular narratives of the Second World War and cultural representations of the Holocaust from the Nuremberg trials of 1945-6, to the establishment of a national memorial day by the start of the twenty-first century.

Part I

Confronting the Holocaust

1

‘No One Believed What We Had Seen’: British Soldiers Who Witnessed Mass Murder in Auschwitz

Duncan Little

The Auschwitz extermination camp is synonymous with the Holocaust. Countless books and films have been made about its horrors and over one million people visit its site every year.¹ It is a lesser known fact, though, that hundreds of British men were imprisoned on its outskirts in camp E715, a site designated for POWs.² This was originally located in Auschwitz III, next to the Monowitz concentration camp and approximately two miles east of the gas chambers. In 1944, the camp was relocated by a short distance to be in closer proximity to the IG Farben plant that was engaged in the production of synthetic oil and rubber as part of the German war effort. The British soldiers held within this complex were thus in a unique position to observe Nazi crimes, and to try and ease the suffering of individual concentration camp prisoners by providing them with food and cigarettes. Some of these men would become key witnesses in the 1947–8 IG Farben trial at Nuremberg, helping to document industry’s use of slave labour during the Second World War. The British public, however, remained largely unaware of the POWs’ connections with Auschwitz and it is only relatively recently that details of their plight have started to receive greater media and academic attention. Drawing upon post-war affidavits, together with the author’s own interviews with three POW survivors, this chapter sheds new light on their experiences.³ In the process, it offers a compelling example of why the Holocaust can be considered very much a part of Britain’s own national history.

Eyewitnesses to the Holocaust

Working in the IG Farben plant meant that the British POWs quickly became accustomed to the constant brutality of the Nazi regime. In his post-war affidavit to the Nuremberg hearings, Robert Ferris recounted one occasion where he witnessed the SS carrying 30 dead bodies through the main entrance of the factory and down ‘into the cellar of the administration building’.⁴ Frederick Davison also stated that he saw murder being ‘committed on four or five different occasions’ and that concentration camp prisoners would be killed ‘in the streets of the factory grounds’. He added, ‘I have seen the bodies themselves hundreds of times’.⁵ More recently, Brian Bishop recalled similar scenes when he would return from the factory to the POW camp:

There were four ropes on a makeshift gallows with four bodies hanging from them. No one seemed bothered that they were there; it was one of those things that happened and there’s nothing we could do about it. It was no different from someone being shot down in the factory.⁶

Such testimonies clearly demonstrate an awareness of the casual executions that occurred among the slave labour force, yet the British soldiers have also spoken of the wider extermination process that was already underway by the time of their arrival in Poland. Bishop states, ‘if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction then you could smell this awful, sickly smell. That upset me more than anything I think.’⁷ The smell was not the only indicator of what was happening in Auschwitz; some of the Jewish prisoners the POWs came into contact with could speak English and would therefore converse with the British, relaying what they had heard or seen:

They used to come in and one of them was missing and you used to say ‘Where’s so and so’ and they used to say, ‘Gone for a shower’, and you used to say, ‘Without a soap and towel?’ They just used to nod their heads and you knew then that they had gone to the gas chambers.⁸

Such observations clearly highlight some of the difficulties that the Nazis faced in trying to keep their activities secret, especially when IG Farben officials also started to complain about the ‘terrible smell’ from the crematoria.⁹

The post-war affidavits from the British POWs share the same theme: everyone knew of the gas chambers and were aware that Jews especially lived under the constant shadow of death. Such narratives help to complicate existing scholarly arguments about the state of Holocaust awareness in Britain (and other Western democracies) both during and immediately after the war. While governments and early war crimes trials may have been reluctant, or simply unable, to comprehend the particular persecution of any one victim group, the example of the British POWs shows there was some knowledge of the true character of the Nazi extermination programme even if they were not necessarily given a chance to articulate it straightaway.¹⁰ While hindsight and the subsequent emergence of more information about the Holocaust may obviously affect retellings of the E715 experience, Joseph White argues that the British POWs were nonetheless quick to make the connection between those ‘stripees’ wearing a Star of David on their uniforms, and those bearing the brunt of physical abuse. He claims, ‘no one left Auschwitz with any doubt as to who perpetrated the Holocaust, or against whom’.¹¹

Many of the British soldiers also made it their mission to learn as much about Auschwitz as possible. Leonard Dales, for instance, recalled how one Jew made him promise that he would survive so he might tell the outside world about the cold, calculated manner in which murder was being carried out.¹² Another POW, Charlie Coward, has also been credited with using his position as trustee and camp spokesman to pass information about the gassings to British and Swiss authorities. This included sending details of Jewish transports to the War Office.¹³ For White, this desire to discover the facts and understand the racial hierarchy within Auschwitz exemplifies the ‘humanity’ of the British soldiers. He argues that, in their refusal to remain passive observers, the responses of the British POWs constitute a marked contrast to those of German bystanders.¹⁴

British reactions, however, went further than simply documenting what they had seen. Practical relief for concentration camp prisoners was also attempted, with POWs giving their own soup rations to the Jews. Bishop admits that the food was inedible – ‘we always gave it to the Jews because it stank so badly you just couldn’t drink it . . . [but] they were really thankful’.¹⁵ The exchange, however, was not without some risk. Doug Bond records that ‘if the SS spotted us offering soup to the Jews then they would kick the bucket over and threaten to shoot’.¹⁶ As POWs, the British soldiers were in receipt of Red Cross parcels and were thus in a position to share other items with the Jews. In his affidavit, Leonard Dales recalled an occasion where ‘one of our boys’ tossed a cigarette to a Jew ‘who was loading some pipes’. In the ‘scramble’ to retrieve this gift, he injured his leg. What would normally have been a fully treatable cut became an instant death sentence. The Jew turned to Dales and stated, ‘I guess this is the end. It means the gas chamber for me.’¹⁷

To some extent, the POW camp may be regarded as something of a mixed blessing for the British soldiers. In addition to occupying a position of ‘relative privilege’ in the Nazi racial hierarchy, many of these men also noticed material improvements in their conditions compared with previous spells of imprisonment in Italian POW camps.¹⁸ In Italy, Red Cross parcels were shared between two or three men; in E715 Auschwitz there was a period when they would receive a single parcel each.¹⁹ Similarly, when the POWs were moved closer to the IG Farben factory in February 1944, they found showers, better toilet facilities and a repair room for clothes and shoes. By contrast, POWs in one of the Italian camps only had a bar over a trench to act as their improvised lavatory. However, the reality of being housed in such close proximity to the Auschwitz crematoria negated most of these improvements. Brian Bishop insists that ‘for the smell alone, I would have preferred to stay in the Italian POW camps’.²⁰

It is also important to note that not all of the British soldiers at Auschwitz were classified as POWs; some were sentenced to live as concentration camp inmates themselves. Corporal Kenneth Lovell from the Durham Light Infantry was one such example. Initially imprisoned in Stalag 383 in Bavaria, he escaped only to be recaptured on 23 November 1944. He was then sent to Auschwitz, whereupon ‘my head was shorn and I received a striped inmate suit with a black triangle and the letters XKGF [former prisoner of war]. I was not considered a prisoner of war anymore and was treated like any other concentration camp inmate.’²¹ Stripped of the protection afforded by POW status, Lovell spent the rest of the war as a slave labourer.

Private Harry Ogden was also reclassified as a concentration camp prisoner and sent to Auschwitz. He endured various incidents of physical and mental abuse. He was kicked and beaten during interrogation, sentenced to 36 lashes and left in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water. He remained in Auschwitz until the end of the war.²² Ogden’s case was later investigated by the United Nations War Crimes Unit, but it appears there was little (if any) interest in his wartime plight back in Britain. There remains a lack of specific data as to just how many more British men simply disappeared into the Nazi concentration camp system.

The British soldiers who retained their POW status were also far from immune from becoming the victims of war crimes. Brian Bishop recounts how the IG Farben camp manager, Gerhard Ritter, would fire his gun through the British huts to ensure prisoners were out of their bunks, on parade and ready to go to work at the crack of dawn. On one occasion, this performance resulted in one British man being injured by a stray bullet as he lay on his bed.²³ The POWs also held Ritter responsible for one of the few British deaths at E715 Auschwitz. Corporal Reynolds had refused an order to climb ‘70 feet up girders in the deep cold of the 1943 winter’, fearing he would freeze to the metal unless he was supplied with appropriate protective clothing; Ritter executed him on the spot.²⁴ In a separate incident, another soldier, Private Campbell, was stabbed for helping a Polish girl carry a pail of soup. In this case, the man survived.²⁵ White names the perpetrator as Benno F, a German army sergeant, and states the same figure was responsible for the shooting of Reynolds.²⁶ Other witnesses remember his full name as Benno Franz and maintain Reynolds was killed by Ritter. Either way, some of the British POWs plotted to avenge these incidents by luring both men under a set of girders and dropping concrete slabs onto them.²⁷ Although this particular plan was never put into effect, there were other, more subtle, ways in which the British taunted their captors and tried to introduce aspects of their own culture into the surroundings.

One example of this was Arthur Gifford-England’s garden. Unable to work in the factory after an accident, Gifford-England approached fellow POW Charlie Coward explaining that he wanted some plants. In exchange for cigarettes, these were duly obtained from the nearby town of Oświ˛ecim and Gifford-England planted tomatoes and flowers in an area roughly six feet by six feet. He saw this garden as a very British act of defiance against the Nazis.²⁸ Another clear respite from the horrors surrounding the POWs was football. Sunday was their rest day and the Britons divided themselves into four separate teams, the majority of fixtures occurring in 1944 on a field outside E715’s perimeter and a clear mile from the concentration camp. Local people and POWs alike would watch these matches. Back within E715, the POWs would also stage plays; surviving advertisements for two performances in December 1944 reveal productions of Sweeney Todd and Night at an Inn. It is unclear why these particular plays were chosen by the men, particularly given the macabre content of the former. White notes the introduction of a ‘Shylock-type character’ in Night at an Inn and suggests this might be seen as indicative of a ‘cultural anti-Semitism’ that had not been completely shaken by the scenes in Auschwitz. Whether or not this was the case, it is clear that any latent prejudice that may have existed did not impede efforts to try and help Jews.²⁹

Football, gardens and plays offered a means of raising morale and alleviating stress among the POWs, as well as a form of protest against the Nazis. The latter was demonstrated when the camp authorities sent a censor to view one of the plays and ensure that the British were not making derogatory remarks about Adolf Hitler. The cast had been banned from singing God Save the King and so instead decided upon a rendition of Land of Hope and Glory. Gifford-England recalls that the British deliberately sat two burly POWs either side of the censor. When they stood to sing this replacement for the national anthem, they pushed themselves against the Nazi, forcing him onto his feet as well.³⁰

Defiance, though, did not stop at potentially upsetting a censor during amateur dramatics. There are anecdotal stories that the British POWs, having already protested that being forced to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Confronting the Holocaust
• Part II The Holocaust on Screen
• Part III The Holocaust in Exhibitions
• Part IV Commemorating the Holocaust
• Bibliography
• Index